[NacMacFeegle]

[Tom]

[NacMacFeegle]

You could always get a laptop with a 14" 1920 X 1080 screen and set the resolution to 1440 X 900. I definitely hear you regarding the poor keyboards found on a lot of laptops, but I do know that there are certainly laptops with good keyboards out there if you can find them. If you're willing to spend a good chunk of money (think around $1000) you could go buy a customized laptop from a company Alienware, Origin, or Cyberpower, and get exactly what you want.

[Tom]

I am pretty sure unless you are viewing at native LCD resolution the text isn't going to be as sharp. At least that's how it is on every LCD screen I have ever used.

[NacMacFeegle]

You might be right, I haven't tested it to find out. Also, I did a quick search of the custom PC builders I mentioned, and none of them carry 14" screens anymore! There's a bunch of other similar companies around though, so I'm sure one of them has 14" available. The 1440 X 900 resolution is a 16:10 aspect ratio as opposed to the 16:9 aspect ration of 1920 X 1080. 16:10 used to be the popular ratio up until about 7 years ago, which is about when the transition to 16:9, possibly because people started watching more movies on their laptops (for which the 16:9 ratio works better). These days I think the only laptops with that aspect ration are Macs, and they have 2880 X 1800 screens. Here's an old Lenovo laptop on Amazon (windows 7) with a 16:10 1440 X 900 screen refurbished for $270, and here's the $2,200 Razer Blade with a 3200 X 1800 14" screen. It's been my dream laptop for awhile lol.

[Tom]

Well, I don't plan to get a new laptop anytime soon. They'll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands. Still works fine and upgrading would be a downgrade to an inferior screen, keyboard, and touchpad. That's another nit with the latest generation. The touchpads are too freaking big. Bigger is not better. I want a touchpad, not a palm magnet! Who designs this crap? And don't get me going on touchscreens...

[NacMacFeegle]

[Joey]

The laptop comments are most welcome since the wife says she wants one and I am clueless about laptops.

[Joey]

Yes, I have seen some good posts online showing how to change windows 10 sharing/privacy settings. My current thinking is to get a laptop for the wife. It will either already have win 10 or I will upgrade it to win 10. I will then be able to make sure any software I write (Gmap4) runs in browsers under win 10. Meanwhile I will keep my XP desktop chugging along and have the wife's retired XP machine as backup. I run a malware detector and it has been years since I had any malware.

[Sore Feet]

[Riverside Laker]

I recently upgraded my Underwood typewriter for an IBM Selectric. It's much faster to type my NWhikers posts than before, but my nephew who puts them on the internet still takes forever to upload them. Maybe I should have upgraded to a PDP 11.

[NacMacFeegle]

One bit of laptop buying advice I always give to people is to buy the most powerful machine you can afford. The reason being that laptops are difficult if not impossible to upgrade or repair, and so the lifetime of your device is very dependent upon how powerful your device is to start out with. People tend to say "well, I only need something that I can write with and browse the internet", bu the fact is that if you spend any amount of time on the computer, no matter what that time may be spent doing, you will appreciate having a powerful machine. Some hardware recommendations: Ram: 4GB is a bare minimum, with 8GB pretty much being the current standard, and 16GB a comfortable amount for future proofing. You probably only need more than 16GB if you're doing a lot of photo and video editing or animation. Storage (hard drive): A terabyte is kind of the standard now for traditional Hard Drive Disks (HDD). The best by far is the WD Caviar Black, which is super reliable and comes with a great warranty. I highly recommend that you also get a solid state drive (SSD) for your operating system and most used programs. SSD's have such faster read/write speeds that anything that uses information stored on them will perform much, much better. The caveat is that SSD's are much more expensive that HDD's; $80 will buy you a terabyte of HDD but only a one or two hundred gigabyte SSD. Currently, the ideal setup is a small (100-200 GB) SSD with the OS and a few other program, paired with a terabyte or more of HDD storage for stuff like documents, videos, and photos. Processor (CPU): Definitely look for an Intel chip, I'm not a fan of AMD. The best bang for your buck is hands down the latest intel core-i5; i3's and i7's are great, but when it comes to price to performance ratios the i5 wins every time. If you really need to save money though the i3 will work just fine, and if you need a lot of power and are willing to shell out big bucks to get it an i7 will be great. Graphics card (GPU): Depending on your needs a dedicated graphics card is optional, it's largely a must for users of photoshop, video editors, or for graphics intensive games, but for everyday tasks, and even less power-intensive editing and games, a laptop without a GPU will do just fine. If you do want a GPU I'd definitely recommend an Nvidia card over an AMD card. Of all PC components the GPU is what advances the fastest, and as a result becomes obsolete the fastest. Screen: This is largely dependent upon your personal preferences, you can chose between matte vs. gloss (Matte is generally more durable, less prone to accumulating smudges and dust, and has less glare. Gloss produces more attractive images, but that's about it), IPS vs TN (IPS=better colors/viewing angles, TN=faster response time), and of course screen size. For a laptop: 14" and below is very portable, but limits your work space. 16" and above has more work room, but is much less portable. 15.6" is in my opinion the optimal screen size. For desktops I recommend going as big as your space and budget allows. 23" what I would consider a minimum for a desktop. For resolution, anything over 1080p is going to be steep, and the more pixels the more power you'll need, but going to 1440p or 4k results in magnificent eye candy, and is a definite advantage for photo/video editors. Unless you're buying (perhaps building) a desktop PC that's pretty much all you'll have to worry about. When buying a laptop you'll probably have to compromise somewhere if you have a fixed budget, and sometimes finding one that exactly suits your exact chosen specifications is impossible. That said, even if you don't have quite as much RAM as you'd like, your processor isn't quite as zippy as you planned, likely it won't make too much difference, and if you're savvy and patient you'll eventually find a bargain that'll either save you money or get you something that might otherwise have been well outside your price range!

[Joey]

@Nac - Thanks for taking the time to post those recommendations. Very useful!

[Randito]

I don't know what your budget is, but I got my wife a Surface Pro III along with a docking station, full sized keyboard and mouse + a 24 inch 1080p TV / monitor. It's a pretty productive setup -- very portable and fun to use on the go in "tablet mode" -- but when there is work to be done, slide it into the docking station and it's like having a desktop machine. I actually got her two docking station setups -- one for home and one for the office. That way she doesn't need to lug anything other than the "tablet" portion with her -- not even the power supply. The newly announced Surface Book looks pretty sweet -- but definitely a premium price tag. If you are a CostCo member -- they have a good selection of laptops from low-priced models to ridiculous gaming/desktop replacement machines. Because of their generous return policy, you can buy one, use it for 89 days and if you aren't happy with it, return it for a full refund -- Most machines now have "reset to factory" feature -- so wiping off all your stuff doesn't involve a lot of pain and suffering on your part anymore.

[mike]

what Nac said except: (desktop) -I'm not ruling out using an AMD cpu. Good value there for a budget. -And I consider 1200 vertical a minimum resolution for a monitor if you do anything besides watching videos.. 1080 is just too squatty for me. And go IPS. There are some really nice 24" 1920x1200 IPS monitors out there for hardly more $$ than the short squatty TN's. And more/bigger is better.